2017 Mainstreet Marketing Award Winner (joint)

Big Santa Mystery Codeword Competition - Grote Business Precinct

Grote Business Precinct’s (GBP) Big Santa Mystery Codeword Competition formed part of Adelaide City Council’s citywide Christmas in the City promotion. GBP brainstormed this unique and memorable Christmas marketing campaign to attract customers to our Mainstreet.

Customers were offered the opportunity to WIN a fabulous Christmas present - a first prize $4,000 SA Holiday. Hundreds of entries were received from far and wide.

People visited local traders to view life size Big Santa standees to retrieve mystery codewords to enter. Traders could track the success of the competition directly and offer their own customers a value add.

A key Grote Business Precinct mandate to members and stakeholders is to encourage customers into the city to trade with them, building economic prosperity.

This Big Santa promotion was designed to have shoppers interacting with traders, retailers and service organisations alike in a fun, festive way to build Mainstreet awareness. A range of traditional marketing techniques, coupled with modern social media discussions achieved this goal.

One lucky shopper and their family won the ultimate Christmas prize - an SA holiday of their choice to the value of $4,000. The successful campaign was family and community inclusive, celebrating our Precinct’s unique Christmas icon, Big Santa, now calling the north face of the Adelaide Central Market Tower his new ‘home’.

GBP’s focus was also to add value to the full Christmas in The City promotion run by Adelaide City Council, to ensure collectively, all Precincts / Mainstreets offered their own unique experience, collectively adding a vibrancy to the City, encouraging shoppers to the Adelaide, regardless of their age, gender, ethnicity or personal likes.

Objectives/Strategies

Objectives were to raise Precinct profile, increase mainstreet foot traffic, attract new customers, deliver a fun, unique promotion for both traders and customers to interact with and deliver a unique Christmas shopping experience. The strategy was to get maxiumum exposure for the competition and drive traffic to market.quarter.com.au using social media, word of mouth, signage, print and radio.

Implementation

The Big Santa Mystery Codeword competition was launched with a fun street parade on the evening of Friday 18 November 2016, the night before the 2016 Credit Union Christmas Pageant.

40 life size Santa coreflute standees were walked by local traders and members of Rotary Adelaide West and Chinese Welfare Services through GBP’s main street, adjoin arcades and Adelaide Central Market. Their aim was to engage Friday night shoppers and lifestyle patrons with this quirky promotion. A memorable social reward for visiting our Mainstreet precinct.

After the Parade, Big Santas were distributed to traders for display in store for the duration of the 4 week competition. Competition details were promoted on line, through social media, instore posters flyers, on community radio.

40 separate code words (unique on each Big Santa standee) displayed at different locations gave participants multiple chances to enter the competition. The more shops they visited, they more words they could collect, and the more often they could enter.

Entrants were directed to the Precinct’s Market Quarter website (www.MarketQuarter.com.au) to use the online entry form. This also introduced these visitors to the wealth of online promotions of news, events and local traders promoted on this Mainstreet promotional website.

Although winners were notified directly, other entrants were encouraged to visit the Precinct’s Website and Facebook page find out if they were winners.

Overall, this was a feel good promotion, adding much value to local traders.
The promotion generated positive conversations instore and enhanced trade in the precinct.

The precinct’s www.MarketQuarter.com.au website and Facebook pages were the platforms used to enable the public to interact online with this promotion. This resulted also in an increase in ongoing ‘followers’ of our Mainstreet precinct.

Results/ Outcome

Over the competition’s 4 week timeframe, this Big Santa promotion gained more mainstreet trader participation and customer interest than any other Christmas promotion run by the precinct of the past 16 years. Many reporting their existing customers were delighted to be offered a FREE opportunity to enter a competition. Plus NEW customers were noted to be walking into our traders premises.

Big Santa also generated an increase in local trader membership enquires to Grote Business Precinct, as they saw the effect of a positive mainstreet marketing promotion supporting them.

Visitation to the precinct’s www.MarketQuarter.com.au marketing website spiked with the need for customers to use the online entry form. This also raised further awareness of traders.

Pedestrian traffic increased on Grote Street and surrounds, resulting in improved business awareness. Hundreds of entries were received from all over metro Adelaide, interstate and as far away as the UK.

Due to the promotion’s success in 2016, the Big Santa competition will be supported by traders again in 2017 with a major prize double in monetary value.

"We had fun. It helped engage everyone in the Christmas spirit. It brought customers in to the shop that we don’t normally see which resulted in increased sales. There were lots of favourable comments about our Santa. We will definitely do it again". Rose - A Class Shoe Repairs